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Addon Updates

Hey Guys, long lurker new poster.. Just had my Kunenea Forum converted over to Vanilla, and working well thus far.. Kinda of reminds of the fun times when I once used phpFusion when it first came out..

The one thing I'm finding a little difficult to manage though is the Add-on control. Being able to be notified about an update and also being able to install and uninstall the plugin all from the web front end rather than having to go in via FTP.. I hate to say it, but Wordpress has this nailed..

Is there any future ideas around Add-on management being built into the product and also I guess this require some major process changes as far as submission to the catalogue etc .

Also one of the nit picks if I was to have one was around OOTB file attachment capability for the forum.. People want to share pictures etc etc, and a lot of forum users (especially in my case) don't have instagram / facebook etc, where they can copy the embed html etc.. (They wouldn't even know what that is.. Or even if it was a case users could have their own gallery.. this would work :)

I have found a lot of the WSYWIG editors are very browser buggy, not working in chrome but in IE and vise versa.

Anyway guys great job.. And props to the community..

Cheers.

Comments

  • LincLinc Detroit Admin

    @danstoll Welcome!

    We have a new editor coming in the next release that will fix those bugs and enable file uploading without needing more addons.

    We also would like to move to a GitHub-based addon gallery. I have no ETA on that.

    As for auto-updating, that is an extremely complicated feature that it took WordPress many years to get to. We'd love to do it, but we don't have the resources currently for the development it would require.

    I have an open issue to add a new version notification to the Dashboard, at least. Currently you have to pay attention to the news feed to see it, which is less than ideal to be sure.

  • Cheers Linc, Working for a software company myself (Both in on-prem and SaaS) I fully understand the complications around rolling in and out new features and functions.. Great to hear some new functionality on the way.. It is the community that makes software like this, and was the main reason I choose Vanilla over the "Community" supported "Open" platforms. :)

  • x00x00 MVP
    edited August 2014

    I don't really like the fashion for wordpress like updaters.

    I know it goes against the grain to say this , but I believe that webapps have no place having the much control of the server file system, and you enable it you a already have weak file management practices. Of course I'm a hypocrite somewhat, but it not something I'm really comfortable about.

    Totally against the grain of these self contained web apps that manages everything, but I favour deployment scripts which are client based. It saves having plain text credential in your webfolder, or in database, and you aren't setting ridiculous ownership and permissions for all your files.

    I know these deployment script tend to be for frameworks with a totally different culture and learning curve, than the average user of wordpress user. However I see no reason why it couldn't be made user friendly. It could also interface with the browser in some way, and even be initiated by content returned from the server.

    I think there is some scope for hosted panels to control web infrastructure, but bare in mind these are much more heavily protected for that purpose, than something like vanilla/garden which is just a transportable nice little framework that you just dump on the server wherever, you wouldn't expect people to do the kinds of complicated setups you do with a a web panel (and personally I hate them, give me shell any day).

    Addon based updating isn't going to be realistic without more rigid versioning.

    grep is your friend.

  • LincLinc Detroit Admin
    edited August 2014

    @x00 said:
    I don't really like the fashion for wordpress like updaters.

    I know it goes against the grain to say this , but I believe that webapps have no place having the much control of the server file system, and you enable it you a already have weak file management practices. Of course I'm a hypocrite somewhat, but it not something I'm really comfortable about.

    The WordPress team has said that automatic updates were there most dividing, acrimonious feature addition ever. It's a huge trust issue. Definitely another deterrent from committing to developing it.

    @x00 said:
    Addon based updating isn't going to be realistic without more rigid versioning.

    That's also true; our current versioning pattern isn't terribly conducive to automatic upgrades, because, unlike WordPress, we don't place backwards compatibility (BC) above all else. I'm fairly confident the 2.1 to 2.3 upgrade will be fully BC, but the 2.0 to 2.1 was not, and I don't have the slightest idea if 2.5 will be completely BC or not.

  • If plugin versions have to be tied to and official release exactly in such a system then compatibility is less of an issue.

    grep is your friend.

  • businessdadbusinessdad Stealth contributor MVP

    @x00 said:
    I know these deployment script tend to be for frameworks with a totally different culture and learning curve, than the average user of wordpress user.

    Having worked in the WordPress environment for quite a while, I would like to add "and developer" to the above, followed by a deep sigh.

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